


Three Empty Vows

by LadyPuck



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Empty Hearse Spoilers, F/M, Gen, His Last Vow Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, Somewhat of a Fix-It, The Sign of Three Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyPuck/pseuds/LadyPuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock tells three lies that seem like promises. Or, Sherlock's really not ok, in more than one way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Empty Vows

**“I wanted to avoid dying. If at all possible.”** ~ Sherlock Holmes, The Empty Hearse

 

Sherlock is…not ok. He knows it far before Serbia, far before the supposed end of his journey through ‘death.’ And he certainly can’t escape the knowledge of how not ok he is in London.

He walks into the restaurant without thinking, without planning his revival to the last inch the way he had plotted his death, because to be in the same city as John Watson and not be near him is unthinkable. He could feel the desperate pull throughout the flight, the much needed bath, the torturously slow shave he had endured – it was as if now that the barrier between him and England was broken, the banked need to be in the presence of his best friend was new burning. There was certainly work to be done but not until this one imminent necessity was taken care of.

John. Watson.

Only, the moment he entered the posh restaurant, he couldn’t help but find cover, couldn’t help but bow to instinct and blend in like the last two years had trained him. He simply couldn’t walk over to the man with dusty blonde hair and tense shoulders and say…what would he say?

 So Sherlock panicked ( _not good)_ and almost involuntarily grabbed at a disguise and it was good, too good, why was it working, why didn’t John _look up_ …

His eye catches a red velvet box between John’s fidgeting hands and his heart rises to his throat and he loses control of the situation, watching almost like a ghost the next few minutes, his body working on horrible, tactless, uncomfortable autopilot.

“You’re dead,” the woman breathes out in horror at one point.

“No, I’m quite sure. I checked.” His own words break through to him, a passenger in his body. He _had_ checked, biting the inside of his cheek a dozen times, making sure he felt pain, if nothing else, that he wasn’t stuck in a some dungeon, dreaming. There were times, and rather a lot of dungeons, where he hadn’t been sure he wasn’t dead and the world around him a hell.

But to paraphrase Shakespeare, hell was empty and all its demons here, on the all too real earth.

And in this restaurant, one of his personal demons was playing out before him, devastation and grief morphing into hatred, bitterness, and fury. Then John punched him and he flinched inside his mind, _flinched_ and hated himself for it. His best friend attacked him and suddenly Sherlock was half there, half in a hundred other terrible places (and how strange to think that in this moment, John was a terrible place) and he couldn’t do anything but hope the damage wasn’t too bad.

**Author's Note:**

> Some lines from Series 3.


End file.
